Is the growing disillusionment with the ANC’s leadership justified or were expectations unrealistically high?
AS SOUTH AFRICANS prepare to commemorate on Thursday the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, after 27 years of incarceration under the apartheid regime, one question seems to occupy the nation’s collective psyche.
Over the past 10 years, has the 91-year-old’s legacy of democracy, reconciliation and equality been squandered by the politicians who took over from him when he stood down as the country’s first democratically elected president in the late 1990s?
On Tuesday, after South Africa’s last apartheid-era president, FW de Klerk, outlined the historical necessities that led him to release all political prisoners and lift the ban on political parties, those who feel the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has done just that made their views clear.
Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille said the current ANC leadership was threatening the country’s democracy by abusing the institutions of the criminal justice system to protect political allies, purge opponents, entrench their power and enrich themselves.
Given the DA is predominantly a party supported by white or coloured (mixed-race) people, their view is not unexpected, but ever-increasing numbers of the black majority have become disillusioned with the ANC also.
In late 2008 disenchanted members of the ANC broke away from the ruling party and formed the Congress of the People Party (Cope), which won 7.42 per cent of the vote in last year’s general election, a credible result given the party was only six months old.
Those who abandoned the former liberation movement said senior ANC members were more interested in securing power and wealth for themselves than speeding up poor service delivery and tackling the high levels of crime and unemployment.
Hilda Ndude, who walked beside Mandela as he took his first steps as a free man on February 11th, 1990, told reporters last week how her feeling of incredible optimism at the time had now been replaced by a loss of faith in the governing party.
“With the ANC going off on a tangent in the manner it has done, that [Mandela’s legacy] has been squandered. It has been lost and I don’t think we’ll be able to recover it. Mandela wanted one nation where blacks and whites see themselves as South Africans. I think we fell short,” said Ndude, who is now a Cope MP.
But is the criticism directed at the post-Mandela ANC leadership fair or even accurate? Prof Dirk Kotzé from the University of South Africa’s department of political science believes those who are overly critical of the current ANC leadership have unrealistic expectations due to a poor understanding of the situation.
“While Mandela’s ideas for the new South Africa were to be applauded, they were abstract and broad. In conjunction, the goals he set, like ensuring the country did not descend into civil war in the mid 1990s, were immediate. He did not deal with securing the country’s economic future.
“The leaders who have come after him have had a much harder task, as they are trying to reconstruct and develop the country economically from a very low base. This was never going to happen in a short period of time,” he says.
Kotzé goes on to say that while Thabo Mbeki did veer away from Mandela’s idea of a non-racial society by embracing the idea of pan-Africanism, in part to establish his own identity, his successor, Jacob Zuma, was steering the ANC back towards embracing a non-racial society.
“Jacob Zuma’s approach to governing is very similar to Mandela’s, and he appears to have equality as one of his main messages. He has gone out of his way to try and embrace the minority communities in South Africa both before and after last year’s general election, and has appointed a number of whites, coloureds and Indians to senior government positions, which reflects his approach,” he explains.
Elizabeth Sidiropoulos of the South African Institute of International Affairs says the perception that the ANC has squandered Mandela’s legacy is also partially down to its record on the international stage.
The West and opposition parties have repeatedly criticised South Africa under Mbeki’s presidency for not taking a firmer stance against Zimbabwe’s dictatorial ruler Robert Mugabe, and for repeatedly blocking the UN Security Council from acting against regimes deemed a threat to global security.
“There has been a sense that South Africa should be conducting itself better on the international stage when it comes to human rights. But the reality is it’s very difficult to engage in international affairs, so we have taken very careful positions,” she says.
She adds that on the domestic front it was always going to be difficult to move from the rhetoric of equality and poverty reduction to making them an economic reality.
“Mbeki tried to make it happen, but many of the policies, like Black Economic Empowerment, implemented to address these inequalities, have not worked for the majority. It was never going to happen quickly, but it would be unfair to say progress has not been made or that Mandela’s legacy has been squandered,” she concludes.
